Digital stories
What is digital story telling?
Digital Stories are multimedia movies that combine photographs, video, animation, sound, music, text, and often a narrative voice. Digital stories may be used as an expressive medium within the classroom to integrate subject matter with existent knowledge and skills from across the curriculum. Students can work individually or collaboratively to produce their own digital stories. Once completed, these stories can easily be uploaded to the Internet and can be made available to an international audience, depending on the topic and purpose of the project.
Roland, C. (2006). Digital stories in the classroom . School Art, 105 (7), 26.
Why use digital stories in the classroom?
Learning by telling digital stories is fun and creative. As students create stories, they learn to research while analysing and synthesising a wide range of content. Communication skills are developed as students learn to organise their ideas, ask questions, express opinions, and construct narratives. Students learn to put different pieces of media together in order to develop an effective story for an audience.
Students who are learning English as a second language have found benefits in digital storytelling. Retelling and creating their stories supports their oral language development.
When digital stories are published online, students are sharing their work with an authentic audience, including their peers. This provides opportunities for feedback, and learning through the examples of others. Digital storytelling appeals to students with diverse learning styles and fosters collaboration with students working in groups.
Bridget Harrison, a teacher at Kimi Ora Community School, shares how she scaffolded the writing process for her students through creating digital stories.
Grow Waitaha DigiAwards foster authentic learning through digital creativity. This entry Te Waka O Tama Rēreti from Bromley School was 2019 overall runner-up.
Developing informative writing skills by creating a documentary – A teacher inquiry
Renee Strawbridge (DP Mt Biggs School) shares her purpose and how she researched and structured her teacher inquiry.
Identifying features of a documentary
Mt Biggs School students and their teacher explain how they developed their understanding of how to film a documentary.
Developing writing skills in the context of making a documentary
Mt Biggs School teacher, Renee Strawbridge and her students explain how they used storyboards to structure information while making a documentary.
Students’ story: Making a documentary about eels
Students from years 6,7,8 at Mt Biggs School share how their writing improved through the process of making a documentary.
Supporting students to construct documentary videos
Year 6/7/8 teacher, Renee Strawbridge and her students explain how they organised their planning and received feedback to successfully film their videos.
Improving oral language and writing with Photostory
Irongate School teacher, Marion Croad, describes the improvements in her New Entrant students' written and oral language as a result of using Photostory.
Teaching digital stories using tuakana-teina
Irongate School has a focus on improving student literacy levels particularly for their large population of Māori and Pasifika students.
Improving student writing with digital stories
Bridget Harrison at Kimi Ora Community School shares how her students are using digital stories to scaffold the writing process.
Using digital stories to improve student literacy
School teacher Natasha Jacobs and students from her Year 5/6 class explain how they create a storywheel that is then digitised and supported with audio narration.
Using digital technologies to support te reo Māori
Teachers and students at Tautoro School talk about videos they have created to support the learning of te reo Māori. "Our students make resources for themselves. Digital learning objects where they make the creations of promoting more vocabulary in their language."
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Key resource
edtechteacher
Examples, resources, and ideas for integrating digital storytelling into the classroom.
Digital storytelling
Resources for digital storytelling and multimodal literacy from Stony Brook University.
The Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, California developed the Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling, which are a useful starting point as you begin working with digital stories.
